Should we use genetic testing to choose what type of children to bring into the world, and if so, how should we choose? Is it acceptable to choose a deaf child? Should we choose our children on the basis of non-disease traits such as intelligence if that were possible ? Does genetic selection put too… Read More »Interview with Julian Savulescu on Genetic Selection and Enhancement
* Note that this entry is being cross-posted at the Journal of Medical Ethics blog.
Introduction
Is prostitution harmful? And if it is harmful, should it be illegal to buy (or sell) sexual services? And if so, should there ever be any exceptions? What about for people with certain disabilities—say—who might find it difficult or even impossible to find a sexual partner if they weren’t allowed to exchange money for sex? Do people have a “right” to sexual fulfillment?Read More »Guest Post: Prostitution, harm, and disability: Should only people with disabilities be allowed to pay for sex?
If you’re a young woman, your face is worth between 48-67% more than that of a young man. That’s the gist of the Judicial College’s Guidelines for the Assessment of General Damages in Personal Injury Cases, 12th Edition (2013) – one of the canonical texts used by lawyers. For ‘Very Severe Scarring’ ‘in relatively young… Read More »If you’re female, your face is worth 48-67% more than mine
‘Come in’, said the Well Known Educational Psychologist. We did. ‘Please sit down’, she said, and we did. She didn’t waste time, and quite right too. We wanted to know.
‘Tom and I have had a very interesting afternoon.’ That sounded bad.
‘He’s a very able child indeed’. That sounded worse, because it came with the emphatic pause that always indicates a big ‘but’.
In the pause I wondered why we’d done this. Why we’d taken a little boy out of the woods and out of his playground to have someone fumble inside his head with blunt tools: indices, probes, inventories, and assumptions about normality.
‘He’s quite dramatically dyslexic, I’m afraid.’ My wife shared her fear. There was a lot of it sloshing around. ‘But his IQ is so high that he’ll be able to use lots of coping strategies. And he’s still very young: there’s lots that can be done.’ And she told us what it was. Regulations could be invoked, tribunals could be convened, cards could be flashed, phonemes could be chanted. He could be imprinted like other children. It would just take longer. It would be hard work, for Tom and for us, but there was every reason to be hopeful of a ‘good result’.
And what the hell did that mean? I asked myself. I was too polite to ask her. I didn’t want a result. I wanted my son.Read More »A Dyslexic boy in a Trojan horse
